The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, January 27, 2017

-- the
plan appears to be to incorporate both a carrot and stick approach to
convince some localities to drop their opposition to enforcing
immigration law and to challenge and threaten other entities to obey

Yesterday, Donald Trump threw down the gauntlet to sanctuary cities by issuing an executive order that directed federal agencies to identify funds the government can withhold to punish sanctuary cities. It's a shot across the bow to the more than 300 states, cities, and towns that refuse to cooperate with the federal government in deporting illegal aliens.But it's not going to be easy. The funds that the Trump administration will target have other purposes than enforcing immigration law, which may cause the effort to come a cropper in the courts. So the plan appears to be to incorporate both a carrot and stick approach to convince some localities to drop their opposition to enforcing immigration law and to challenge and threaten other entities to obey.USA Today:

Trump will be armed with a range of powerful options, including federal lawsuits and the power to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that states and cities rely on."The Trump administration can largely get the results it is seeking and a real meaningful end to most of these sanctuary policies through a combination of carrots and sticks," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, who has advised the Trump transition team on immigration enforcement options. "The point is not to go around whacking all these little cities and counties, it's to get them to do the right thing. And for the die-hards, to confront them."Local communities are digging in for a fight. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel created a task force to help undocumented immigrants and pledged $1 million for a legal defense fund. "Chicago always will be a sanctuary city," he said.Some cities — including San Francisco, Chicago and New York — proudly declare themselves sanctuaries and have enacted policies that prohibit municipal employees from turning over residents or information on them to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).Other cities more narrowly restrict police from inquiring about the immigration status of detained suspects. There also are cities that work with federal immigration authorities but refuse to hold suspects in jail solely so ICE agents can pick them up.

Lawsuits against sanctuary cities will probablyt take years to resolve. But going after grant money is a different story:

The Trump administration has the power to cut off much of that funding. For example, Justice's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, or SCAAP, distributed $165 million in 2015 to local agencies that detained undocumented immigrants in its jails.Laurie Robinson, a former assistant attorney general under Presidents Clinton and Obama who headed the Office of Justice Programs, which oversees grants, said the statute implementing SCAAP gives an attorney general broad power to decide who gets money."They could cut off drug programs, domestic violence grants, violence against women grants," she said.

The hue and cry that such cuts in funding will provoke presents a thorny political problem for the Trump administration, but not an insurmountable one. The threat of a cutoff may bring many of these sanctuary cities around. If it doesn't, the cuts in grant money will be weighed against the federal government's compelling need to deport criminal aliens - an issue for which most residents even in sanctuary cities agree is in the community's best interests.While there are legal minefields to avoid or overcome, it seems a certainty that the first serious effort to fight the defiance of immigration law by sanctuary cities will be attempted by the Trump administration.

Rick MoranSource: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/01/how_trump_can_cut_off_funds_to_sanctuary_cities.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

2017 has begun with enormous concerns for the mullahs in Iran.

A tumultuous year lies ahead. With a new administration taking the helm in Washington, the French elections upcoming, then the sham “elections” in Iran, and unprecedented developments in the making in the Middle East and on the international stage.

With the regime weakness bringing joy to the Iranian population, the mullahs are left terrified of a repeat of uprisings on the model of 2009. This is especially significant with crucial presidential “elections” coming in May.

They have the main source of distributing terrorism and instability across this flashpoint region. In fact, their presence in Syria guarantees the mullahs’ continued rule back home.

Khamenei recently said if they hadn’t fought in Syria, they “had not been confronted [in Syria], we should have stood against them in Tehran, Fars, Khorasan and Isfahan.”

In response to the latest Syrian ceasefire effort, Iran and its proxy elements are the sole parties seeking to sabotage the entire initiative. According to Syrian opposition leaders, Iran is the sole party seeking nothing but to maintain Assad in power at all costs.

No political solution is possible in the Levant as long as the IRGC and their Shiite militias are present in the country. Thus, if we seek peace in this land, the only serious path forward lies in expelling the mullahs from Syria. The main party in detriment from a ceasefire and eventual peace in Syria is none other than Tehran.

The Obama administration’s appeasement policy vis-à-vis Iran is the main reason behind the Syria tragedy and the mullahs’ dominance in this war. Iran counted on the West’s engagement approach to literally export its extremism under the banner of Islam.

The end of Obama’s tenure leaves little hope for the mullahs’ regime to act as they wish. This situation intensified ever since the occupation of Iraq back in 2003. Khamenei has been the main benefactor in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. But such days are over.

Considering the failed rapprochement approach, a policy change is needed to end the Middle East crisis. Actions must be taken in the face of the IRGC’s terrorism and its destructive role in the region. Otherwise neither the Middle East nor the world, for that matter, will ever experience true peace and tranquility.

We cannot ally with one form of extremism to root out another. Extremism under the name of Islam, be it Sunni or Shiite, is no different in viciousness and none represent Islam. In fact, they are better described as forms of religious fascism.

Therefore, no government can promote an alliance with Tehran under the pretext of pursuing a security policy. Furthermore, we cannot neglect our principles for the mere sake of short-term economic gains and turn our backs on human rights and women’s rights violations in Iran.

Today’s Iran has an alternative with a democratic agenda based on respecting religious freedoms, universal suffrage, separation of church and state, and gender equality. The voice of this alternative should be heard, as proposed by nearly two dozen senior top U.S. officials in a hand-delivered letter to President Donald Trump.

The solution presented by the Iranian opposition can render a new era for the people of Iran, nations across the Middle East and beyond. We only need to remain loyal to our democratic values and principles.

Shahriar Kia is a political analyst and member of Iranian opposition (PMOI/MEK). He graduated from North Texas University. @shahriarkia

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/01/appeasement_of_iran_must_end.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

As part of this arrangement, all forces from the Iranian military,
the pro-Iranian Shiite militias and Hizballah will be required to leave
Syria.

Syria stands on the threshold of dramatic changes that will directly
impact on the strategic and military situation along the Syrian borders
with Israel and Jordan, debkafile reports exclusively. They derive from a deal struck this week by US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin
to establish US, Russian and Turkish security zones in Syria. This
scheme will transfer military control of the country to those three
powers. Each of them will be responsible for a zone whose borders will
be defined and agreed upon by Washington, Moscow and Ankara.

As part of this arrangement, all forces from the Iranian military,
the pro-Iranian Shiite militias and Hizballah will be required to leave
Syria.

The US military is to have two security zones – one covering the
entire area east of the Euphrates River up to the Iraqi border including
Kurdish areas (see attached map). This arrangement will partly
resurrect the accord reached in late 2015 by US President Barack Obama
and Putin, for the division of Syria into areas of influence. All
territory east of the Euphrates was allocated to the US, with Russia
taking responsibility for all areas west of the river until the
Mediterranean coast. .

Under the new deal, the Turkish area is to stretch about 650
kilometers along the entire Syria-Turkey border and extend between 35
and 50 kilometers into Syrian territory up to Al-Bab, the town where the
Turkish military is engaged in its third straight month of fighting for
its capture from ISIS.

debkafile’s
military and intelligence sources report that the overriding change on
the ground will be the establishment of a second US security zone
adjacent to Syria’s borders with Israel and Jordan. It means that the
approximately 7,500 US special operations forces troops currently in
Jordan will be shifted northward into southern Syria.

Russia had originally planned to deploy Syrian military, pro-Iranian
Shiite militia and Hizballah forces in battles for the capture of land
around the cities of Derra and Quneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan.
That plan has been dropped and will be superseded by the deployment in
southern Syria of US troops accompanied by Jordanian special forces and
Syrian rebels, trained by American instructors in Jordanian military
camps.

Israelis will breathe a sigh of relief over the removal of the threat
of Iranian and Hizballah forces being deployed along their northern
border with Syria.

The Trump-Putin deal for Syria and its ramifications are explored in the coming issue of DEBKA Weekly (for subscribers) out Friday, with especially attention to the way it leaves Iran and Hizballah high and dry. If you are not yet a subscriber, click here to sign on.

debkaFileSource: http://debka.com/article/25900/Trump-Putin-safe-zones-deal-ousts-Iran-from-Syria Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

We, and not our opponents, must place ourselves in a position to
define what is and what is not real "Islamophobia." If we cannot do
that, others will conflate criticism and hatred, and clamp down on both
at once.

While it is not surprising to
find Muslims offended by certain words or images, it is distressing to
find Western courts and other bodies only too willing to turn
"Islamophobia" into a criminal offence in countries that otherwise value
free speech and open expression.

When the Dutch politician Geert Wilders was brought to court on a
hate speech charge, all he had done in fact was to ask a simple
question about Moroccan immigrants -- should the Netherlands take in
more or fewer? That is a question with many potential answers based on
political, social, or demographic grounds. It is a rational question
that is, almost by definition, one that could be asked in the Home
Office of any state that receives immigrants.

"Forty percent of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands between
the ages of 12 and 24 have been arrested, fined, charged or otherwise
accused of committing a crime during the past five years, according to a
new report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Interior." – Dutch-Moroccan Monitor 2011.

If we had to choose one thing that has obstructed many Westerners
from understanding modern Islam and undermined our ability to handle its
excesses, it would be our perception of Islamophobia. How many times
have fair and honest criticisms of one aspect or another of Islam,
rebukes of behaviour, or literary and artistic expressions of Muhammad
or other figures been loudly shouted down or banned on the grounds that
such criticism was "Islamophobic"? In Europe, individuals have been
arrested, tried and sentenced for "Islamophobic" utterances. As Judith Bergman recently commented, in Europe it is becoming a criminal offence to criticize Islam.

In 2011, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff,
for example, a former Austrian diplomat and teacher, was put on trial
for "denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion
[Islam]," found guilty twice, and ordered to pay a fine or face 60 days
in jail. Some of her comments may have seemed extreme, but the court's
failure to engage with her historically accurate charge that Muhammad
had sex with a nine-year-old girl and continued to have sex with her
until she turned eighteen -- its regarding the historical record as
somehow defamatory -- and the judge's decision to punish her for saying
something that can be found in Islamic sources, illustrates the betrayal
of Western values of free speech. A charge of "Islamophobia" was enough
to confine the freedoms that most Westerners take for granted.

Elisabeth
Sabaditsch-Wolff, a former Austrian diplomat and teacher, was put on
trial for "denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized
religion [Islam]," found guilty twice, and ordered to pay a fine or face
60 days in jail, simply because she made the historically accurate
statement that Muhammad had sex with a nine-year-old girl -- something
that can be found in Islamic sources. (Image source: ICLA video
screenshot)

Sabaditsch-Wolff is not the only person to suffer for this "offence". Danish author Lars Hedegaard suffered an attack on his life and lives in a secret location. Kurt Westergaard,
a Danish cartoonist, suffered an axe attack that failed, and is under
permanent protection by the security services. In 2009, in Austria, the
politician Susanne Winter
was found guilty of "anti-Muslim incitement", for saying, "In today's
system, the Prophet Mohammad would be considered a child-molester." She
was fined 24,000 euros ($31,000) and given a three-month suspended
sentence. The phrase "child molester", like the charge made by
Sabaditsch-Wolff was based on the fact, recorded by Muslim biographers,
that Muhammad had sexual relations with his new wife A'isha when she was
nine years old (after marrying her when she was six).

Neither historical fact nor literary sophistication (as the British
author Salman Rushdie learned to his cost) are able to deflect charges
of Islamophobia.

What is worse is that, while it is not surprising to find Muslims,
especially those from unsophisticated backgrounds and little education,
offended by certain words or images, it is distressing to find Western
courts and other bodies only too willing to genuflect to those charges
and turn "Islamophobia" into a criminal offence in countries that
otherwise value free speech and open expression.

Recently, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a man who could very
well become Prime Minister of the Netherlands in 2017, was found guilty
of "inciting discrimination and insulting a minority group," merely for
asking voters whether they favoured larger or fewer numbers of Moroccan
immigrants – a legitimate if controversial political question. Wilders,
of course, is known for his antipathy towards Islam, but pertinent
concerns about its influence in a democracy do not make him an
"Islamophobe", despite repeated accusations of it.

Fear of being "Islamophobic" affects not just the lives of outspoken
individuals but the lives of whole populations. Because leading
politicians are desperate not to offend Muslims, they often shape public
and foreign policies to avoid even the appearance of "Islamophobia".
This is, at the domestic level, done to avoid giving offence to growing
numbers of Muslims in countries in Europe and North America. Giving
offence invariably results in outraged Muslims chanting death threats in
the streets; outraged but well-controlled leaders of Muslim
organizations appearing in radio and TV interviews masquerading as
victims of government or police intolerance, and demands for banning
this newspaper, that book, or the resignation of a politician who said
something unwise.

A careless word of offence may ruin trade relations with a Muslim
state or threaten the cancellation of lucrative arms sales to a human
rights-abusing, obscenely rich oil-state in the Gulf. A controversy like
this happened to the British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in early
December, when he condemned Saudi Arabia and Iran for their sectarian
proxy wars in Yemen and elsewhere -- only to have his views angrily rejected
by the Prime Minister, who had just returned from the Gulf on a visit
to promote British goods and services. In a shifting world -- with
Britain pulling out of the EU and desperate for trade deals anywhere it
could find them - hurting the feelings of people who can buy you up and
spit you out is hardly advisable.

And this is where accusations of "Islamophobia" come into their own. Fear of it results in leaders such as Barack Obama, John Kerry, David Cameron, and Pope Francis
repeating "Islam is a religion of peace" or "terrorism has nothing to
do with Islam", when, in fact, Islam has never been free of
religiously-inspired violence and the terror attacks we see around the
world today have everything to do with Islam and its call to jihad.
Denying that involvement for fear of giving offence or encouraging
further violence means that Western powers have handicapped their own
ability to recognize the source of conflict, target it, and end it.
President Obama's history of avoiding offence and staying apart from
direct action in the Middle East was the result of such woolly thinking
-- not just woolly thinking but lying through his teeth.

Those of us who express sincere concerns about Islam in general or
specific beliefs and actions committed in the name of the religion, yet
wish to have respect for Muslims as people and for those aspects of
their lives that are not a cause for concern (prayer, alms-giving,
celebrations, pilgrimages, social work, mysticism and so forth), have to
speak and write in a manner that shows we are not "Islamophobes". We
need to do this if we are to be taken seriously, allowing our thoughts
the chance to be heard and not dismissed as "bigoted" or "racist".

Much critical work is, however, greatly undermined by a vast quantity
of bigoted, racist and genuinely Islamophobic comment on social media
and elsewhere. This material, some of which will be quoted here, comes
from a deeply worrying trend associated with the far-right, as well as
associations of white supremacists. While a great many of these comments
or videos on YouTube clearly come from people who seem semi-literate or
poorly educated, this is by no means universally true. Many have
obviously made limited efforts to educate themselves about Islam. But
their efforts at self-education fall short. They repeatedly make factual
errors or leap to wild assumptions. They do not know an Islamic
language, have never consulted primary sources, nor have they read
serious academic studies or reference books such as the Encyclopedia of Islam.
But when someone with qualifications challenges their ignorance, they
become angry and call their critics "apologists for Islam", something
that has happened to the present writer more than once. It is never
enough to point out that one may be personally critical of Islam, for
they do not seek rational debate or moderate opinion, only hardline
condemnation.

For such people, it is never acceptable to point out that a majority
of Muslims are good people, honest, charitable, spiritual. No, for them,
all Muslims must be evil, Satanic (a common term), liars and murderous
terrorists. Both their language and attitudes betray them as being close
to, if not at times, also anti-Semites. Much the same sort of slurs,
falsehoods, and calls for murder are increasingly used again about Jews;
and it is an understanding of anti-Semitism that acts as a measure for
judging these anti-Muslim rants. Anti-Semites create stereotypes about
Jews, that they are liars, money-grabbers, conspiratorial enemies of
Gentile society. So too, real Islamophobes stereotype Muslims, claiming
they are all violent, bent on the overthrow of Western governments,
deceivers using the principle of taqiyya [dissimulation] to lie
to non-Muslims. Both forms of hatred stem from fear of people who are
different, both find their most loyal following in the same parts of
society where the Nazi party found its supporters.

In 2015, an Australian body named the Online Hate Prevention
Institute, led by Andre Oboler, a British Zionist who has fought hard
against anti-Semitism, carried out research on anti-Muslim hate on
social media sites. On December 10, 2015, the Institute published an
interim statement entitled the Spotlight on Anti-Muslim Internet Hate Report
and intended to publish a full report in March 2016. Sadly, the
Institute has been unable to find further funding for this work with the
result that this valuable research may never be made fully public or
available to government ministries.

This report is based on over 1,100 items of anti-Muslim
hate in social media reported and categorised by the public through our
FightAgainstHate.com reporting tool. The vast majority of the hate this
report is based on was found on Facebook. The report indicates the
volume of content by category, and how effective Facebook has been in
responding to content in each category. The vast majority of this hate
has not yet been removed.

This author was given access to a considerable part of these 1,100
items and can testify that many of them are genuinely disgusting and
filled with hatred. Here is a short selection of comments taken from
them and from other websites, including YouTube. They are
self-explanatory. Even to suggest that there are reform movements within
Islam is beyond the pale to someone whose username is "IzlamIsTyranny".
Some of the milder comments include:

Islam encourages criminal acts every day, every month, every year, in every mosque, by every imam, on every corner of earth.

Repeated calls to drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca, for example, or
calling on others to stab Muslims, calling Muslims "sandmonkeys" --
statements one can find in several places -- are deeply offensive. Have
these bigots forgotten how many Muslim preachers call Jews "the sons of
apes and pigs"? Imitating the people you despise can hardly be an
intelligent policy or one calculated to win friends in places of
influence.

When the Dutch politician Geert Wilders was brought to court on a
hate speech charge, all he had done in fact was to ask a simple question
about Moroccan immigrants, should the Netherlands take in more or
fewer. That is a question with many potential answers based on
political, social, or demographic grounds. It is a rational question
that is, almost by definition, one that could be asked in the Home
Office of any state that receives immigrants. Governments make such
decisions regularly, and many have to answer similar questions since the
influx of vast numbers of refugees into Europe since 2015. Wilders's
concern about Moroccans has a rational basis in the Dutch-Moroccan Monitor 2011:

Forty percent of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands
between the ages of 12 and 24 have been arrested, fined, charged or
otherwise accused of committing a crime during the past five years,
according to a new report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of
Interior.In Dutch neighborhoods where the majority of residents are Moroccan
immigrants, the youth crime rate reaches 50%. Moreover, juvenile
delinquency among Moroccans is not limited to males; girls and young
women are increasingly involved in criminal activities.

But when someone says we should stab Muslims in the throat or,
"slaughter all Muslims", there can be no question that this is hate
speech, and hate speech with murderous intent. Our problem is that
politicians, church leaders, and decent people in general may be led to
conflate the two forms of utterance -- the intelligent and critical as
against the bigoted and violent. For Wilders and others who want to
criticize Islam or ask questions about some Muslim behaviour, the
presence of genuine Islamophobia is no help at all. It muddies the
waters everywhere. Before the matter gets out of hand, responsible
critics of Islam badly need to act to silence this hate speech by
joining forces with governmental and social media administrations to
clamp down heavily on it. We, and not our opponents, must place
ourselves in a position to define what is and what is not real
"Islamophobia." If we cannot do that, others will conflate criticism and
hatred, and clamp down on both at once.

Dr. Denis MacEoin is the author of a forthcoming book
on causes of concern about Islam. He has degrees in Islamic studies and
is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9588/two-islamophobias Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

With the passing of time,
vigilance will be abandoned and people who express concern will find
themselves vulnerable to bullying and defamation if they try to address
an issue or crack down on a violation.

Radicalization is not only
manifested through the use of violence, but also through desiring to
live by and impose sharia law on society.

One reason for the increased popularity of sharia is the
radicalization of second- and third-generation Muslims in Western
societies.

The school board said it believes that the checks and balances
put in place will ensure that the Friday sermons are not used for
radicalizing Muslim students; however, as laws against "Islamophobia"
become a reality in Canada, and attempts to raise a concern are labelled
hate speech, one should not count on it. With the passing of time,
vigilance will be abandoned and people who express concern will find
themselves vulnerable to bullying and defamation if they try to address
an issue or crack down on a violation.

Saied Shoaaib, a Muslim authority and expert on political Islam,
points out that the dilemma for Western societies is that the only
version of Islam available to them is the radical version, mostly in
mosques and Islamic schools, and also in public libraries.

The ongoing demand for the accommodation of Muslims in Western
societies is a situation worth understanding. In the documentary "The
Third Jihad", Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim who dedicates his
life to fighting radicalization, explains that it is a cultural jihad
that is meant to destroy our society from within -- slowly and gradually
to impose the sharia way of life.

On January 10, 2017, I attended the Peel District School Board's
meeting where recommendations for allowing Muslim students to write
their own sermons (khutbah) for congregational Friday (Jumma)
prayers in public schools were received. For more than 15 years,
students were allowed to pray in the school but not in a congregational
setting. In June 2016, the Jumma prayer was officially adopted but the
students were only allowed to read from a list of pre-approved sermons.

Mississauga is one of three cities in the Peel region and the sixth
largest city in Canada with high ethnic diversity and a population
nearing one million. One of Mississauga's calls to fame is that it is
home to at least eight members of the "Toronto 18"
-- the first terrorist cell uncovered in 2006 and that aimed to create
an Al-Qaida type of operation in Canada. Some of the 18 attended public
schools: Saad Khalid, for example, who was sentenced to 20 years in
prison for pleading guilty to a single count of acting "with the
intention of causing an explosion or explosions that were likely to
cause serious bodily harm or death or damage property". He was known to
have attended the Meadowvale Secondary School. There, he had started an Islamic Club and, in the lecture hall, had led Friday prayers, which he attended with fellow arrestees Fahim Ahmad and Zakaria Amara. If people like Khalid are the champions of organizing Jumaa
prayers and Khutbah in their schools, it is no wonder that pre-scripted
sermons were the way to protect public safety while allowing Muslim
students still to practice their faith.

Today, radicalization in Western societies is becoming epidemic. It
has become a reality of life in general, and an everyday concern to
parents in particular -- especially parents who want their kids safe
from terrorism as well as parents who want their kids safe from
radicalization.

This crisis could not be more highlighted than by a segment recently
aired by 1010 News Talk, ironically on the same day, the morning January
10, 2017: "What do you do if your child decides to join ISIS?" -- a
topic that was probably unimaginable a few years ago, when protecting
public safety trumped sensitivity, but has become a reality today as
sensitivity seems to overpower protecting public safety.

The school board said it believes that the checks and balances put in place[1]
will ensure that the Friday sermons not be used for radicalizing Muslim
students; however, as laws against "Islamophobia" become a reality in
Canada, and attempts to raise a concern are labelled hate speech, one
should not count on it. With the passing of time, vigilance will be
abandoned and people who express concern will find themselves vulnerable
to bullying and defamation if they try to address an issue or crack
down on a violation.

While the case of Ghada Sadaka,
a principal in the York Region District School Board, is slightly
different. She was forced to apologize for postings on Facebook and
comments such as:

"A good start, but where is the voice of Muslims who are
not extremists and of which they condemn these acts of terrorism. This
is the time of vocalizing "where you stand"!!!"

Sadaka was simply posting her thoughts on social media without
addressing a particular issue at schools. Yet, the purportedly moral war
launched against her is only a pilot project: it is a warning to any
other principal who tries to create awareness about radicalization or
condemn it.

Radicalization is not only manifested through the use of violence,
but also through desiring to live by and impose Sharia law on society.
Under Sharia, polygamy is legal, honour crimes and female genital
mutilation (FGM) are not punishable, amputations are welcome as a form
of punishment, gays and apostates should be killed, and women's rights
are no more.

A 2016 survey
noted that one in four UK Muslims prefer to live under Sharia. This
troubling finding led to former head of the UK Equality and Human Rights
Commission, Trevor Phillips, who popularized the term "Islamophobia",
to admit that he was wrong. He said: "I thought Muslims would blend into
Britain... I should have known better." Today, the UK is plagued with
having two parallel legal systems: the UK courts and the Sharia courts.

One reason for the increased popularity of sharia is the
radicalization of second and third generation Muslims in Western
societies. Uncovering the root cause of that radicalization can be found
in the book Lovers of Death,
authored by the Muslim authority and expert on political Islam, Saied
Shoaaib. In his book, Shoaaib points out that the dilemma for Western
societies is that the only version of Islam available to them is the
radical version, mostly in mosques and Islamic schools, and also in
public libraries. Even when he visited the Ottawa public library and
handed them books that represent a more peaceful outlook on Islam to
balance out what is already there, the library never considered
including them in their Arabic language collection.

The idea of increasing the Islamic content in the public sphere is
pathetic; especially in a society where so many people seem to have
agreed that the founding Judeo-Christian values should take a back seat
in an attempt to make everybody feel "included". These accommodations
result in the immense risk to our freedom of speech and way of life.
There is also an economic penalty, as in the reduced opportunities for
employment and lost business recently highlighted by the closure of the Peugeot auto plant, due to the excessive prayer breaks requested by Muslims who constitute the majority of the workers.

The ongoing demand for the accommodation of Muslims in Western
societies is a situation worth understanding. In the documentary "The Third Jihad",
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim who dedicates his life to fighting
radicalization, explains that it is a cultural jihad that is meant to
destroy our society from within - slowly and gradually to impose the
Sharia way of life. Produced exactly 10 years ago, the documentary was
re-released in 2017, to demonstrate how his accurate predictions of
societal transformation have come to pass. Now, for an accurate
prediction of where Canada will be in 2026 if we continue on the same
path, one need to look no farther than the report, "The Islamization of Britain in 2016" at Gatestone Institute, by the meticulous scholar, Soeren Kern.

Two or more students can pray together on any other day but prayers would not be led nor include a sermon.

Students may write their own sermon (khutbah) or can use a sermon (khutbah) from a bank of prewritten sermons, obtained from the school MSA or a local faith leader.

Sermons will be presented in English, except for any verses quoted directly from the Quran.

Sermons must comply with the school code of conduct, the Education Act, its Regulations and the Ontario Human Rights Code.

As with all student activities in schools, appropriate disciplinary
and corrective action will be taken where there are any contraventions
of the Ontario Human Rights Code or the school code of conduct.

Maha Soliman is based in Canada.Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9786/radicalization-public-schools Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Back in business.

They're back.

One of the pleasant things about the very best Dutch cafés is that most of them subscribe to a dozen or more newspapers from all over western Europe. It was thanks to this amenity that I became aware, soon after moving to Amsterdam from New York in the late 1990s, of the European media's poisonous hatred for the United States. In the eyes of almost all European journalists, I discovered, America was a land of illiterates, cretins, racists, xenophobes, warmongers.

And that was under Bill Clinton. It got even worse under George W. Bush. To be sure, on the day after 9/11 a few editorialists took the “We Are All Americans” line, but others enjoyed the opportunity to spit at the victims of Ground Zero, declaring that America had asked for it. Swedish author Jan Guillou cheered the strike on “U.S. imperialism.” Norwegian author Gert Nygårdshaug sneered at somebody's concern that the next target might be in Europe: Muslims, he explained, hate Americans, and with good reason; for Europeans, however, they had nothing but goodwill.

The Afghanistan war further intensified the European media's anti-Americanism; and the Iraq war took it up yet another notch. Newspapers all over the continent accused Bush of terrorism, equated him with Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (or said he was worse than either of them), derided him as a puppet of Israel, depicted Guantánamo as the ninth circle of hell, and called for an end to the Atlantic alliance. “It is not easy to know whom one should believe in this world of Bushmen and Saddamists,” wrote an editor at Norway's Dagsavisen, “where the truth is for sale and friends can hardly be distinguished from enemies.”

Then, one day, the anti-Americanism almost completely vanished from the European media. The date: November 4, 2008. Americans elected Barack Obama president, and suddenly America wasn't so terrible after all.

Part of the reason for the shift was, quite simply, shock. For a long time, a core belief of the European media had been that the overwhelming majority of white Americans were racist cavemen. How to make sense of the fact that millions of them had voted to put a black man in the White House? European journalists couldn't make sense of it.

But they knew one thing: they loved Obama. They had to love Obama. And they had to love him even more than Americans did – even more, indeed, than American journalists did. Because if they didn't, they'd be the racists. (Of course, the fact that they thought this way made one thing crystal clear: they were racists, the whole lot of them.)

In any event, for eight years, the presence of a black man in the Oval Office not only made it impossible for the European media to criticize him; it made them hesitate to go after America itself, at least in the take-no-prisoners way they'd been accustomed to. Guantánamo remained open, and Obama's policies helped make the Middle East even more destabilized and dangerous and led to the creation of ISIS. But you'd hardly have known it if you read the European press.

It must have hurt, having their hands tied like that for so long.

Well, now their hands are untied, and – with a fewscatteredexceptions – they're making up for lost time with a vengeance. As much as they loved Obama – well, that's how much they hate Trump. Most of them hate him even more, and clobber him even more brutally, than the majority of the American media do. No, maybe that's not possible. But they sure do hate him. One reason, surely, is that they know that Trump's victory has helped boost the prospects of Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, and others who – riding on waves of unease about the EU and Islam – seek to replicate the Donald's triumph in their own countries.

So it was that, on January 21, a writer for Spain's El Mundo compared Trump to Chance, the retarded gardener in the 1979 movie Being There who becomes a top White House adviser; over at that country's other big paper, El País, a commentator called his inauguration an “exhibition of male, white, privileged power.” While one piece in Denmark's Politiken was headlined “Obama was a magnificent president,”another spoke darkly of “TrumPutinism.” Sweden's Dagens Nyheter contrasted Trump, “the wicked troll,” with Justin Trudeau, the “fairy-tale prince.”

A Le Monde editorial snickered that while Obama “leaves power with an approval rating that his successor can only envy,” Trump is “a devotee of dystopia” who has “never felt constrained...by the facts” and the brevity of whose inaugural address “testifies to an obstinate denial of the complexity of the world.” (In fact, Trump's inaugural address was two words longer than George Washington's first, 1,298 words longer than Washington's second, and more than twice as long as Lincoln's second.) Also, Trump, in Le Monde's view, fails to recognize the “roots” of jihadism. (The problem here, I daresay, is that Trump grasps the “roots” of jihad all too clearly for Le Monde 's comfort.)

Then there was Morten Strand, who in Norway's Dagbladet called Trump a liar, then strung together a series of flat-out lies about Trump, then mocked him for accusing the press of lying about him. Strand sneered that Trump had “gone bankrupt four times on foolhardy ventures” (as if Trump were a pauper and not a staggeringly successful builder). Strand actually headlined his screed “Mr. Me Is President” – this about a man who, in his inaugural address, used a first-person singular pronoun only three times and the word “we” 46 times, whereas Obama, in his farewell address, said “I,” “me,” “my,” or “mine” no fewer than 67 times. After Trump's first day, Ole Moen, “one of Norway's leading U.S. experts,” toldVG that Trump “creates his own reality” and “surrounds himself with lies.” (This is the same “expert” who, pre-Obama, wrote that Americans were too racist to ever elect a black President.) Fellow “expert” Svein Melby agreed: Trump “lives in his own world.”

Accompanying all the Trump-hate in the European media is a newly resurrected contempt for the nation that elected him. To be sure, many are still so busy trashing Trump that they haven't yet gotten around to sticking the shiv into America generally; others are so far content merely to slam Trump's supporters as “uneducated” and “racist” while holding up Clinton's higher popular-vote total as evidence that most Americans remain on the side of the angels. (Ines Pohl of Deutsche Welle, for example, blamed Clinton's loss to a “demagogue” on “an antiquated electoral system.”) But others have quickly picked up the America-bashing where they left off in 2008 – and as Obama fades even further into history, more and more of them, I suspect, will climb back onto that saddle again.

Just check out Strand's Dagbladet colleague Marie Simonsen, who revealed her own ignorance about Obamacare in what was apparently meant to be a gibe about American stupidity: “It has begun to dawn on some [American] voters that what they thought was the work of the Devil is the same thing as the public health insurance they are grateful for and dependent upon.” In VG, Rune Berglund Steen wrote that American racism played a “central role” in Trump's election. In Aftonbladet, a Swedish daily, Karin Petterson agreed, charging that “there's something fundamentally wrong with...a country” that could elect “a lying, misogynistic half-person [sic] with delusions of grandeur...a bully who hugs racists and mocks weakness...a corrupt madman.” Though the masterly Obama, according to Petterson, “saved the U.S. and world economy in 2009,” even he “was unable to cure the greater trends that are tearing the country apart” – those trends, naturally, being resurgent “racism and hatred.”

In short, the same electorate that put a black man in the White House is, somehow, racist again. The same voters who twice anointed a demigod have now opted for Satan himself. Needless to say, a big part of the reason why Trump won is that Obama didn't save the economy. And if there are racial tensions, it's almost entirely because Obama inflamed them, viciously stoking the victimization culture and racializing absolutely everything he touched.

Not that racial tensions are really tearing America apart: that's an overstatement, and what Obama has damaged can, fortunately, be fixed. But one place that is actually going down the tubes – and is probably well beyond fixing – is Pettersson's own country, Sweden. It's on its way out precisely because she and other cultural-elite types refuse to face up to the very problems Trump has called out and has vowed to address. It's a country where the media, including her own paper Aftonbladet, systematically whitewash the horrific impact of Islam on their society. And many other western European countries, thanks to their own craven elites, are not terribly far behind Sweden on the path to utter self-immolation.

But hey, don't waste your time trying to explain any of that to the European media. They're back on the warpath against America. And this time they'll likely be more vitriolic than ever, driven by an alarm that the Trump revolt may soon be duplicated in their own backyard.

Bruce Bawer is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center and the author of “While Europe Slept” and “Surrender.” His book "The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind" is just out from Broadside / Harper Collins.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265555/europes-hate-america-brigade-bruce-bawer Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Europeans don't want to irritate vast numbers of Arabs and Muslims by siding with a handful of uppity Jews.

A slightly edited version of the original article published on December 24, 2016.

While
nationalism of the Americans, French, and Chinese is admired or at
least accepted, Jewish nationalism (Zionism) is regarded as racism by
pro-Arab activists and journalists. While Syrian President Bashar Assad
declares war against his people, with deaths numbering in hundreds of
thousands and displaced in the millions, next door Israel is lambasted
by the foreign minister of Sweden for "extrajudicial killings," when it
kills terrorists in the act of attacking Israeli citizens.
Notwithstanding the oppression of women in the Islamic Middle East, the
forced marriages, mandatory seclusion, obligatory wearing of tents,
honor killings, enslavement, gang rapes, and sale as sex slaves, the
National Women's Studies Association boycotts Israel, the only country
in the Middle East where women are free and equal.

What explains this double standard?

The
first reason is traditional Christian anti-Semitism. For 1,800 years
Jews were Europe's own despised minority, blamed for murdering Jesus and
then rejecting Christian salvation. This was still being preached from
the Catholic pulpit fifty years ago when I arrived in Quebec. The Jews
were the feeble minority that Europeans loved to hate. Any Jewish
deviation from propriety was seized upon to justify their lowly status.

For 1,800 years, Jews were the feeble minority that Europeans loved to hate.

However,
with the establishment of Israel, Jews were no longer the feeble
minority, but a robust majority of a small state, with Jewish
"pushiness" becoming Israeli military victory. In Israel, the Jews no
longer knew "their place" at the bottom of the European hierarchy, but
were independent actors no longer dependent upon European permission.

Europeans
have responded by being hyper-critical of their despised ex-minority,
demanding things of Israel that they have never demanded of Israel's
adversaries or neighbors, or even of themselves, and condemning Israel
when it does not comply with their unreasonable demands.

The
second reason for the double standard is pragmatic, not to say cynical:
There are hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims, and only a few
million Jews. Arabs and Muslims are spread in many strategically
important locations throughout the world. Furthermore, Arabs and Muslim
make up a huge commercial market for the industrial nations of Europe
and beyond.

Europeans don't want to irritate vast numbers of Arabs and Muslims by siding with a handful of uppity Jews.

As
to propriety and standards of behavior, European Christians never
thought much of, or expected much of the people of the "South." These
gentiles, pagans, and heathens would do just about anything, so there
was no point measuring them against civilized standards and judging
them. Deal with them pragmatically, was the strategy, as politically
important and economically useful. The European rule is this: do not
unnecessarily irritate the vast number of Arabs and Muslims by siding
with a handful of uppity Jews; that would just be foolish. Showing you
are on the side of Arabs and Muslims by condemning Israel is just smart
policy.

The
third and final reason for the double standard is the Holocaust, the
European genocidal project to murder all Jews. Germany expertly designed
and engineered the Holocaust, but was joined enthusiastically by many
in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, and collaborated with by Western
European countries. Even those who did not take direct part, such as
Britain, Sweden, and Switzerland, did nothing to stop the Holocaust, in
spite of pleas that they do so, and some blocked their gates to Jews
trying to escape their fate.

Extravagant denunciation of Israel frees Europeans of their perceived guilt for the Holocaust.

The
shadow of the Holocaust – its blame, shame, and guilt – has hung over
Europe since 1945. After 70 years, Europeans are fed up with hearing
about it. Current generations were not even alive at the time. Why
should they be blamed and feel guilt, they wonder, about something that
they did not do, do not approve of, and would not do themselves. Yet the
shadow prevails.

How
can it be removed? Well, if it turns out that the Jews are evil – that,
given the chance to be in charge as in Israel, they behave exactly like
the Nazis – then the ledger is balanced. European hyper-criticism of
Israel makes both Europeans and Jews oppressors and murderers, equally
guilty and thus equally innocent. Extravagant denunciation of Israel,
however dishonest, frees Europe of its guilt. Americans, implicated in
the Holocaust only to the extent of having closed its doors to Jews
trying to flee, currently favor Israel over the Palestinians, according
to annual Gallup polls, by four to one, while Europeans heavily favor
Palestinians. Americans do not need to escape the blame for the
Holocaust, while for Europeans condemning Israel is the easiest route.

Philip Carl Salzman is a professor of anthropology at McGill University and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.Source: http://www.meforum.org/6497/three-reasons-for-double-standard-on-israel Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

They’ve learned nothing from the election results.

White people concerned about their country need to shut their mouths and have their future dictated to them by radical racist left-wingers, was the apparently unanimous verdict of the angry Democrats seeking to chair their party’s governing body at a recent candidate forum.

As Washington, D.C. radio host Chris Plante quipped, “They haven’t been this upset since we took away their slaves.”

White Americans, Democrats say loud and clear, are the enemy.

It is part of the ongoing meltdown among Democrats apoplectic that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. It manifests itself in the indignant screaming we now hear every day from the mainstream media every time President Trump makes it clear he really does intend to fulfill his campaign promises.

It is a result of the accumulated intellectual detritus from the Sixties mixed in with the identity politics that took over American campuses in the Eighties. “Politics is downstream from culture,” my late friend Andrew Breitbart observed, and now the culture has thoroughly infected the body politic.

Democrats are doubling down on the anti-white racism and identity politics-driven lunacy that became the norm during the Obama years.

So obsessed with nailing whitey to a cross were the DNC candidates that they overlooked the most glaring injustice of the past electoral cycle.

As Michael Sainato wrote in the New York Observer, all of the candidates attending the forum, including the Sen. Bernie Sanders-backed candidate, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), “refused to acknowledge the Democratic primaries were rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton.”

"There was so little dissent among the seven participants that at one point, when asked whether they thought the DNC tipped the scale for a candidate [Hillary Clinton] in the 2016 primary-a criticism lodged frequently and vociferously by Sanders' supporters-none of the participants raised their hands," he wrote, quoting Real Clear Politics.

Candidates to chair the Democratic National Committee all agree that their party needs to be more racist than it has become after eight years of incessant race-baiting and guilt-tripping by former President Obama.

Whites in the Democratic Party need to check their race-based privilege and zip it, according to DNC chairman candidate Sally Boynton Brown, who is executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party.

“Black lives matter and it makes me sad that we’re even having that conversation and that tells me that white leaders in our party have failed,” said Brown during the recent “DNC Chair Candidates Forum 2017” moderated by MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid. We have to teach Democrats “how to be sensitive and how to shut their mouths if they’re white.”

It’s unclear what more the DNC could do to appease Black Power activists.

In 2015 members of the DNC, the party’s governing body, adopted a resolution throwing their lot in with black racists and radical Black Power militants who have openly expressed support for the murder of police officers. The statement slams the United States for allegedly systemic police violence directed against African-Americans.

The resolution specifically accuses American police of "extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children."

In other words, it is official Democratic Party policy that America is home to roving death squads manned by police officers who specifically stalk and execute without trial black men, women, and children.

Democrats mourn thugs if they’re black, excusing their evil deeds. At the same candidate forum Keith Ellison stated without challenge that would-be murderer Trayvon Martin had died by “execution.” If anyone had objected, the person would have been shouted down.

Democrats aren’t racist enough, Brown says, ignoring the painful fact that her party ushered in the polarizing, race-obsessed Obama administration that has left America more divided than it has been in decades.

She continued:

We have to accept that there is prejudice that exists within our own party and we have to be able to have these conversations. We cannot sweep that under the rug. We cannot continue to hide it. We cannot smash voices down when they are trying to scream, “Listen to me, you don’t get it.”

The problem, as she sees it, is that too many melanin-challenged people remain in positions of authority in what the voters in the last few election cycles have reduced to a regional rump party.

Brown blames her skin color.

I’m a white woman. I don’t get it. I am pleased and honored to be here today to have the conversation. I am so excited that we’re here. And I am listening. Because that’s my job. My job is to listen to the issues.

Brown volunteered to be an official censor squelching the views of those who go against her party’s apartheid-like orthodoxy. Like a freshly brainwashed undergrad, she spit out prose reflecting the politically correct slogans that would have earned her an ‘A’ grade on a term paper.

My job is to listen and be a voice and my job is to shut other white people down when they want to interrupt. My job is to shut other white people down when they want to say, “Oh, no, I’m not prejudiced. I’m a Democrat. I’m accepting.” My job is to make sure that they get that they have privilege and until we shut our mouths and we listen to those people who don’t and we lift our people up so that we all have equity in this country, so that we’re all fighting alongside each other, so that we are all on the same page and we clearly get where we’re going, we’re not going to break through this.

She continued:

This is not just rhetoric. This is life or death. This moment in our country, the Democratic Party has the opportunity to do something different. We have the opportunity to really confront the fact that we have not been in alignment with our values. We’ve been talking a lot of smack. We need to make sure that our actions and our words and our values all match and around the issue of race we are so far out of alignment, I don’t even know the way back, but I am listening and I am asking and I am talking to people.

Only people who are not white are qualified to show the way forward, she continued, spelling out a manifesto of sorts.

I am talking to people of color because you have the answers, you can tell me as a leader what I need to do and that’s exactly what I’m going to do, is continue to have those conversations and continue to talk to people and make sure that every single system in our party is designed to give power back to the people. All people, but especially those people who have been disenfranchised in our country since our country started. So please, please, please, please this is a conversation I want to have and I am from Idaho. We are so white. So white. Right? Like I have been reaching out and trying to connect to anybody of color that I can find to be honest with me.

Brown said she and the other unfortunates who share her skin color need to be reeducated.

I am not a politician. I am a human being trying to do good work and I can’t do it without y’all. So please, please, please, get ahold of me. Sally at wethednc.org. I need schooling and I depend on you and the people around our community to do that so that I can go school the other white people.

DNC chairman candidate Tom Perez, who was Obama’s labor secretary and head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department at which he refused to enforce civil rights laws when the victims were white, weighed in with his own contribution to the partisan tribalism.

Incapable of seeing the world without the prism of race, Perez demanded that more Latino police officers work in Latino neighborhoods. “How can you help the Latino community when you don’t have Latino officers?” he said. “Kind of hard to communicate in my experience.”

“That’s why we need a police force, law enforcement, that reflects the community,” Perez said. “That is why we need a business community that reflects America.”

It’s exhausting but there it is.

The Democratic Party is now as openly racist as it was when the Democrat-led Ku Klux Klan lynched blacks, used Jim Crow laws to discriminate against and humiliate blacks, and in 1963 when Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D) blocked the entrance of the University of Alabama to stop black students from enrolling.

Except that today white Americans are the target of Democrats’ wrath.

Democrats hate white people and blame them for more or less all ills in American society. White voters understand this and this is why Republicans now control the presidency, both houses of Congress, and will soon add conservative Supreme Court justices whose influence will last generations. Nationwide, Democrats’ electoral fortunes are at their lowest ebb in a century.

But Democrats are still living in fantasy land. They rage at Trump and all other white people when they only have themselves to blame.